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Cruz and Lee Have Already Succeeded

RUSH: So there's Jay Carney out there saying that Obama's happy that Boehner has offered a short-term extension of the debt limit. And then he said that shut down over Obamacare is a fool's errand. Yeah, well, maybe from Obama's standpoint, but if it hadn't been for the effort to do this, we wouldn't even be here now, and we wouldn't have had a chance to expose Obama and the Democrats for who and what they really are, which is what this is really all about to me.

Let me see if I can explain something else that's been happening here in the past few weeks. We have talked frequently here about the internecine battle among conservatives, Republicans and conservatives. And even if you subdivide it further, Tea Party conservatives versus the people that think they are mainstream Kirkian, as in Russell Kirk or Burkean as in Edmund Burke, conservatives. And as such that manifested itself in the Obamacare fight with two groups. You had the Cruz and Mike Lee group, which was the defund. And then you had other groups that thought that was a mistake, and they wanted to delay. In the process of delay, if you could, for example, delay the individual mandate, you take the guts out of the whole law.

The delay group thought the defund group was a bit disingenuous because they didn't think the defund group ever had a prayer of winning 'cause there was never gonna be the votes to override an Obama veto on it. I didn't get caught up in all that because the competitive nature of this and who is a real conservative is not of interest to me. It isn't. But it is to other people. A prominent media analyst, a conservative, sent me a note and he was livid. He was fit to be tied. He thinks Cruz and Lee are fruitcake nuts, and when he says so he gets vicious, mean e-mail from conservatives insulting him and calling him names and so forth.

And I said, "Gee whiz, is that the first time?" I mean, the thin-skin nature or tendency of some people I guess surprises me, but I try to understand it all nevertheless because it all matters at the end of the day. Now, I happened to glom onto the Cruz-Lee defund effort, and whether it had a chance of succeeding or not ultimately was not a reason to avoid it, to me. I'm equally supportive of the defunders. It's not either/or, and the other side, the ors are my enemy. I just don't look at it that way. Either one would have been perfect. Anybody who is opposed to Obama is fine and dandy, anybody opposed to Obamacare, fine and dandy, whatever their reason.

Now, I understand that the delay conservatives didn't like the defund conservatives 'cause they thought the defund conservatives knew that they didn't have a prayer and that they were just using people to fund-raise. The delay people said that those people would insult them if they wouldn't agree with Cruz, and then there would be threats to primary people out of the party if they didn't express law -- I don't get caught up in all that. That is too infantile to me and it's a distraction to what really is important. And maybe I'm the one all wet here; maybe I'm the one with the impossible task; maybe I'm the guy that's got the impossible dream.

But for 25 years the purpose of this program has been to create as large an informed, participating, voting group of conservative Americans as possible, without any regard to how much money I make in the process from politics. I don't fund-raise, I don't help people fund-raise. That's of no interest to me. It's all ideas to me. It's pure ideas. I think ideas triumph, ideas trump, and if properly explained and properly persuasive, that's ultimately where victory is.

I'm not a professional politician. I don't want to be. I'm not intimately or intricately involved in the minutia of that. I understand it. I understand the people who are. I respect it. It's their business. But I don't take a position here based on is it gonna help somebody fund-raise or is it gonna help somebody get primaried out or any of that.

The defund effort, to me, happened to be attractive because it was led finally by somebody who could articulate conservatism. Ted Cruz. I said, lo and behold, we got somebody who can articulate conservatism; somebody who can explain to the American people what's wrong with Obama, Obamacare, and the Democrat Party. I thought there's value in that. The effort to defund had valor in it. It was a great objective. If we never did things because it's said they're impossible, I shudder to think what wouldn't have ever gotten done in this country. You never know until you start. And sometimes when you have an objective and you lay it out, maybe the defund people -- I don't know. Maybe there's a point where it's considered successful even if they don't reach that specific goal.

I think we're here. I think Obama's at 37%, the Democrats, I don't care what they think inside the Beltway. The Democrats are discombobulated. And I don't care about these polls that say that the Republicans are losing in the shutdown. That is a poll you could do any day of the year and you're gonna get that result. The spread in this poll, say, versus '95 which is what everybody wants to go back to and compare, the spread this year, in Republicans being blamed versus Democrats, is much smaller than it was in 1995.

We have a president not nearly as likable as Clinton was back in 1995. A lot of things are happening today that weren't happening in 1995 that make a positive difference. Bill Clinton was never at 37%, even after Lewinsky. A majority of people never opposed Clinton on much. We have a majority of people opposing Obamacare, opposing most of his policies here. We got one factor here that nobody knows how to deal with, and that's race, the race of the president. That's what's got everybody stymied and shut down on our side. That's what's got 'em palpably afraid to say or do anything.

I just saw a piece by Victor Davis Hanson that he published on his website. He normally writes at National Review Online, and maybe it'll get posted there, probably so. But he makes the point that it's Obama who's looking incoherent, it's Obama who's looking small, it's Obama who's looking petty. And his point is that Obama will make a deal, sooner rather than later, if you just keep the pressure on. We're in the process.

People would say I'm abandoning my post here at reality if I were to say something like we are winning. Maybe that's not the case. But we're at a place where we haven't been in five years. We're winning the public perception on Obamacare, but that's not even a public perception battle. That's reality. People are signing up and they're finding it's a disaster. People are finding out that none of what they were told about it is true. It isn't cheaper. It isn't easier. It isn't anything that they were told.

The 26-year-old college student at the University of Michigan wrote she has been raped by this law. Twenty-six, and she found out she's now not covered by her parents policy. It's gonna take every disposable dollar she earns to pay for this. Every disposable dollar. That means... Well, what does that mean? That means no streaming video from iTunes or whatever disposable income is spent on these days by 26-year-olds. She made it clear.

She's got two degrees, and she can't get a job that's longer than 32 hours a week because of Obamacare. The jobs that she has pay $8 to $10 an hour because of Obamacare. She's got two degrees. She's working in a gymnasium. Now, I don't want to extrapolate and say this is happening all over the place, but it doesn't have to be happening all over. It is going to at some point, as people sign up. In Hawaii, they had to shut down and reset.

Nobody signed up.

Nobody could figure out how to do it.

In California, they're talking greatly about signing up 16,000 people. "Whoa, what a success rate: 16,000 people," or some such thing. This economy is in the tank. It's an absolute joke. There is no growth taking place. There's nothing that's anywhere reminiscent of a growing economy where careers are being created and opportunity is abundant. It isn't. That's reality. People are living it. They know it. They don't have to be persuaded of any of that.

It's something else that's happening without us having to do anything. The very fact that we have delayed the implementation, the full implementation -- the very fact that we've taken action that has caused all kinds of attention to be paid to the implementation -- the people that run this government are showing everybody how they are willing to corrupt it and power and government in order to get what they want. We have the greatest argument for limited government we've had in my lifetime in Barack Obama, Esq.

The single greatest argument for limited government is Barack Obama and today's Democrat Party, and it's happening to people every day. That's why I like the Cruz effort, 'cause there's somebody out there, while all this was going on, who was able to articulate the conservative alternative -- Mike Lee does it well, too -- who is able to talk about what limited government means in terms of personal opportunity. You know, conservatism is not a list of policies.

Conservatism is not tax cuts. Conservatism is a way of life that is rooted in values and traditions that have contributed to the greatness of this country. Conservatism is the way you live, and that just has to be pointed out to people. To people growing up today, conservatism... God, I shudder to think what it is. What is conservatism to somebody that's 18 today? Conservatism is a deranged, lunatic, stupid cowboy, George Bush who wanted to go into Iraq for no reason.

What do you think it is? The way the media and the Democrat Party have defined conservatism today is a bastardization of what it is. One of the frustrating things is, the Republican Party has always been the modern day repository for conservatism, but you can't find anybody there who's willing to stand up and articulate it 'cause they're afraid to or they don't know what it is, or they don't believe in it, whatever.

But Cruz and Mike Lee -- and there are a bunch of others, and they are largely from the Tea Party -- are willing to do it. Allen West was one. Ben Carson is another. There are all kinds of people standing up out there willing to articulate what it is, and when you listen to 'em, you find out it's a lifestyle. It's a value-based lifestyle that's rooted in personal responsibility, achievement, freedom, liberty.

Conservatism is not a bunch of policy wonks sitting around writing position papers. Conservatism is simply how happy, content-ful, responsible people live their lives. People who respect others. That's conservatism, but it's been so bastardized in the media -- it has been so mischaracterized, demonized, you name it -- that young skulls full of mush maybe as old as 30 or 35, get asked, "What do you think they think conservatism is?" and there hasn't been a conservative articulate spokesman in politics for I don't know how long.

So the Democrats and the media have been able to define what a conservative is. It's a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, extremist. That's the furthest thing from the truth. So Cruz and Lee came along, and, in the process of trying to get what they wanted, were articulating conservatism for people. I signed on immediately because, to me, it's about ideas. But the delay people, I love 'em. I love 'em, too. Same objective. The point was to stop Obamacare. There were arguments about how best to do it.

I'd sign on with both sides.

I'm not into the fundraising business of it. I don't care about any of that, although I do want to go back to our last caller. She was a major donor, and she said she's not giving to the Republicans anymore because she's conservative. She doesn't like what the establishment Republicans are doing. There's a Washington Post story on Friday. It's probably scrolled out of my view by now. It has. There was a Washington Post story on Friday which made the claim that the GOP donor class is fed up with the Tea Party.

And they're threatening not to give Karl Rove any more money. They're threatening not to give to any of these PACs and the party and RNC. They're not gonna give any money 'til they get rid of these Tea Party kooks. Yet our caller, who confessed to being a major donor, said, "No, no, no! I'm telling the establishment Republicans they're not getting a dime out of me because of what they're doing to the Tea Party."

But as far as the mainstream is concerned, they want everybody to think that the RNC and the Republican Party donors holding out. That's until the establishment somehow does away with Cruz, does away with Lee, and ends the shutdown, lets Obama pass all the way fully funded, and then gives us amnesty. Only then is the Republican donor class gonna come back and be happy.

Is that what you want? Because that's what the liberal media says it's gonna take for the Republican Party to once again be viable: Obamacare fully funded, Cruz and Lee relegated to irrelevancy, and amnesty the law of the land. Until there's a chance of that happening, the Republican donor class is holding their money out? I think that's a crock. It may be true in some cases, but I think there's just as much money on the other side being withheld.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: To Manhattan we go. This is Dee. I'm glad you called. Great to have you with us here.

CALLER: Hi. It's great to talk to you. I wish my father were still alive. He'd be so happy.

RUSH: Thank you very much. I appreciate you saying that.

CALLER: Rush, what I wanted to say is I think what Ted Cruz and Mike Lee did -- and probably their purpose was to educate people. Rand Paul did not agree with the strategy, but he participated in it. It was so great to listen to Ted Cruz reading all these letters from all over the country, including one from James Hoffa Jr. that told people how bad Obamacare is. This got people talking the next day.

RUSH: I don't think there's any doubt of that. If it hadn't been for what those people did, we wouldn't be here right now.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: It would have been lost. The shutdown would not have happened, the debt limit would have been raised, and the debt skyrocketing, and Obamacare be fully implemented, and we'd be on the way to amnesty.

CALLER: And it was more education than the Republican Party has given the American people on this issue.

RUSH: I think that's it. I think that's the gold mine, and it was coupled with an effort, invitation to people to involve themselves in it.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Yeah, there was a website. Go sign the petition. A lot of you think that's not gonna do anything. That's not gonna make a difference. But it gets people involved, it puts some action behind it, and it illustrates the ability to move people. I even had people impugn that. "What you mean, Rush? These people aren't going to attract anybody. A million-and-a-half, two million signatures? Big deal. You think that guy's gonna win the presidency? I've got another thing coming for you! I'll betcha a million bucks these guys aren't going to win the nomination."

All these long knives and hatred, I don't understand.

Okay, disagree; maybe they don't have a chance to defund it.

Why the hatred?

Why there's so much animosity for these guys, on our side? I hated that, too.